


“Eating was hard. Breathing was hard. Living was hardest.”

by sighingfawn



Series: more than my scars. [5]
Category: Sons of Anarchy
Genre: Angst, Mention of Child Abuse, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-05
Updated: 2014-06-05
Packaged: 2018-02-03 13:24:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,027
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1746263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sighingfawn/pseuds/sighingfawn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Juice uses an unconventional way to say goodbye.</p>
            </blockquote>





	“Eating was hard. Breathing was hard. Living was hardest.”

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry, I had exams and writing this became triggering. Sorry its terrible and lame but hey, they say write what you know. Also, Juice in this chapter is about 15/16.

       Juice sits on his bed in his darkened rooms, the curtains and window haven’t been opened for as long as he can remember and on his knees are a pile of antidepressant boxes. The webcam on his laptop has been open but not recording for an hour while he tries to find the right words to start. It takes him another forty five minutes before he clicks record.  
“I don’t think my parents will ever see this. I-I think the police delete these. Y’know save more heartbreak. If they ever feel any.” He spits the last sentence and pauses. “I don’t- I can’t-” His eyes are damp already and his finger start tapping on one of the antidepressant boxes. “I can’t stay here and know that I’m never going to get out. That all I’m going to be good for is-” He breathes, sharp and sudden. “No. I’m not good at anything, I have no way to get out of this fucking town and I can’t stay here. Not with all these people and so long left. I can’t make it.” He closes his eyes and tries to catch his breath as the room tilts and shrinks.   
“They’ll never hurt me like I hurt myself.” He’s talking about everyone, the kids at school, the teachers, and his parents. “There’s a voice in my head and it won’t leave, it screams and yells and whispers like somebody is draped on my shoulder. I thought only girls could feel like this.”  
“I can’t eat. I don’t want to eat. I feel so fat and worthless.” Juice wipes at his face and grinds his fists into his eyes. “Everything is wrong and sad and sick. I can’t keep doing it. I can’t keep-” He catches himself and runs a hand through his tangled hair.   
“I won’t miss anyone and they won’t miss me. My parents don’t care, they hate me and hate each other. It’s been three days since I ate and they haven’t noticed. They haven’t even looked at me.” He’s talking so fast he isn’t sure that the words will make sense once they’re played back. “I don’t want them to notice it’s just… They haven’t spoken to me in so long, I-I think I got too big to hit so they gave up speaking to me. No fun in arguing if you can’t hit me at the end.” He pauses.   
“Is that, was that all I was good for?” He sits for a minute and cries. “I can’t stay here any more. I don’t want to keep waking up to this same old life until I don’t wake up. I won’t let it beat me, I’m going to quit.” Juice holds up some of the boxes to the camera.   
“I’m lost.” He whispers. “I’m done.”   
He leans forward and moves the mouse to stop recording. He can’t quite catch his breath and he feels as though the words are echoing around the room. He picks up one the boxes and opens one with shaking hands.  
Juice falls asleep fifteen long minutes later.   
       He dreams of events that he’s sure really happened. The time he found his mother curled at the bottom of the stairs with a bleeding mouth and a bent wrist. He stood near her until she sat up and swore at him, telling him his bastard father pushed her down the stairs because Juice cost too much, like he was a pet, then she left eight year old Juice to cry with a slapped cheek and bruised arm on the same stairs his father pushed her down. He dreams about his father towering over him, his mouth opening loud and wide as he pressed Juice against the wall by his neck, squeezing and laughing as Juice tries to struggle. He dreams of fire burning him from the inside out, the flames crawling up and out of his throat. There’s a churning in his stomach that threatens to wake him up but he keeps dreaming.   
He dreams of a life when he is older, where he gets out of this town and goes to somewhere like New York, Florida or California, and finds a job that makes him happy, with cars or computers or something that lets him use his hands for creating rather than harm. Then he comes back to this crappy home town and shows everybody who told him that he’d never be anything that he has made it. He knocks on his parents house and stands in the hallway as he explains that he won’t be staying long, that he only wanted to stop by to make sure he hadn’t missed their fucking funerals. Then he would leave, slam the door on their protests and pleads for money, for Juice to forgive them. He swears to himself that he will never return to that house or speak to his parents again.  
       Juice feels the dream slip away into darkness as the disorientating heat of his room pulls him awake. He throws the duvet from him and tries to recall as many details from the dream before he clambers from his bed, standing on the boxes of unswallowed antidepressants as he makes his way dizzily over to his laptop. Juice doesn’t watch the video he recorded last night, he simply deletes it.   
There’s a difference, he decides as he blinks and finds himself in the kitchen with a bowl of chopped fruit and a glass of milk, between wanting to die and not wanting to be alive. Juice hesitates but opens the curtains and window before sitting down on his bed. As he eats he thinks about the pill boxes on the floor and feels strangely numb to the idea that if he swallowed them all last night he would not be here this morning.  
Juice can’t fully remember the dream but he knows that if he focusses on getting better from whatever is going on in his head then he can get out of this life and start again. He just needs to eat.  


  
As Juice will discover over the years he fights with his disorders, relapse often follows an attempt at recovery.

  


  



End file.
